Alaska Public Media

The abundant cultural diversity of Alaska’s largest city has inspired a new collaboration between Anchorage and an artist co-op with the goal to improve the community through creativity and collaboration.

The Anchorage Artists Co-op has been working with the Youth Advisory Commission and the Anchorage Downtown Partnership for various art projects and workshops. Recently the co-op participated in painting a mural downtown on 5th and D.

Other art displays on public spaces are in the works as well.

Located in downtown Anchorage, in a space that once held a Starbucks, the co-op could be mistaken for just another art gallery. An eclectic mix of floor to ceiling murals cover the walls and two life-size bear sculptures stand in the middle of the floor, but there’s a lot more going on than just visual art on display.

Outside, dozens of people have stopped by on a Thursday evening to watch break dancers perform, while a DJ blasts music from a PA. The KeyBank Plaza is temporarily transformed from a sleepy corporate space to a hive of pounding beats and kinetic energy.

“Seems like we’re having a lot of fun, but I want everybody to be aware (that) this is a historic night. This is the first time this space has been activated in this way,” said George Martinez, special assistant to the mayor, over the mic. “So we’re making history tonight and we’re going to keep that moving forward. Positive energy in the streets, community engagement and lots of love in downtown Anchorage.”

The co-op’s Thursday Night Cypher, what they hope will be a weekly collaborative art event that showcases the culture and creativity of Anchorage, also have showcased custom low rider cars.

Martinez sees a partnership between the co-op and the city as a means to develop a sustainable ecosystem for local artists and in turn, tap into that creativity to benefit the city.

“This is an innovative potential way to integrate artists economically, let alone informationally, to the city, but then also we all harness this together, grows potential tourism and just increases and supports that tourism traffic, which also grows the opportunity for our local artists to have access to different markets,” Martinez said.

While this idea of incorporating the city’s artists in the basic infrastructure of Anchorage is in its early stages, Martinez said that the possibilities are nearly endless. There are the typical goals such as decorating building exteriors, to the less obvious– such as using artist to re-imagine how crosswalks can be designed to be both aesthetically pleasing and safer.

Lee Post, who is on the co-op’s steering committee, is using his experience as an artist and his career counseling youth to help people find their way into the arts.

“I really want to take away any perceived barriers that somebody can take part in the Anchorage art scene,” Post said. “That basically, if you can make art, if you take even the first baby step into creating something, there’s going to be a place for you and the city is going to be receptive and help you develop.”

The Pachamama Band, also known to a few as the Schwoerer family singers, are all members of one Swiss family that has been living at sea for the past sixteen years. They’ve been sailing around the world in a boat called Pachamama, educating people about climate change and re-strengthening humanity’s relationship with nature.

“It’s about respect to nature, about giving back also to others, just to care about this planet like it’s your own mother,” Dario Schwoerer said.

As part of an organization the Schwoerer family started called ToptoTop, their goal was to reach the tops of the seven tallest mountains on each of the seven continents without using motorized transportation of any kind. ToptoTop also took on volunteers when possible to help crew the boat, collect data on climate change, and assist with the kids’ education. Currently, there are three volunteers living on board with the Schwoerers.

Dario Schwoerer, the father of five, said the plan was to take four years to complete this record feat, but the plan has changed slightly since he and his wife first started in the year 2000.

“So, our goal now is to go through the Northwest Passage to Greenland, and do, more or less, a figure eight… and on that figure eight, we will also sail south to Antarctica and hopefully do the mountain we tried to do in 2004 then,” Schwoerer said.

In 2004, Dario and his family attempted to reach Mt. Vinson, the tallest mountain in Antarctica, but their self-built vessel was so damaged by the icy waters that they couldn’t continue. The Schwoerers have faced a variety of challenges during their sixteen-year long sea voyage, including a lack of funding.

One of the sponsors for ToptoTop for eight years was SGS, an international inspection and certification company. But when a new CEO took over SGS, Dario said their educational project’s resources suffered; “now, we are running on half of our budget,” he said.

Currently, the rest of ToptoTop’s budget comes from individual donations and from their other sponsor, Victorinox. Victorinox manufactures apparel and travel gear, but they are more commonly known for making genuine Swiss Army knives. Being of Swiss heritage, The Schwoerer family brought many Swiss Army knives with them to serve different practical purposes on board — and, maybe, a not-so-practical one.

Sabine Schwoerer, a former nurse and now full time mother, used a Swiss Army knife during each of her children’s births. “We cut the umbilical cords… so we have five knives, and we will give them to them (the children) when they are 20,” she said with a laugh.

Five knives for five children: the oldest is Salina, then Andri, Noe, Allegra, and the newborn, Mia, who can be heard crying in the background. All of them were born at sea and have spent their entire lives on this floating home.

So when the children were asked how they felt about frequently moving from place to place, they said, “It’s good, it’s nice, you have to say ‘bye’ to a lot, that’s sad, but you get to say ‘hi’ to a lot, too.”

And the Schwoerer family has said “hi” to a lot, from Mt. Everest, to the Shanghai World Expo facilities, and small villages around the world where they have taught more than 80,000 children about climate change.

After seeing so many beautiful places, Dario still recalled one of his favorite sights, an ice ridge from the Piz Bernina Mountain in his homeland.

“There’s a wonderful ice ridge going to the top, it’s like a stairway to heaven out of ice, it’s really beautiful,” said Dario with a twinkle in his eyes.

Originally a Swiss mountain guide, Dario grew up in a remote village of 55 people located in a part of the Swiss mountains. When he saw climate change negatively affecting his workplace, Dario studied at a Swiss university to become a climatologist and made a plan to educate others about climate change.

That’s why Dario is encouraging and educating children all over the world, including his own.

Dario recalled, “nature teaches them something, every day, and I mean just the other day when we sailed in here and saw the Salmon Creek here. They catched (sic) more than 11 fish, and they have had a blast. Andri the 9-year-old taking them in, Noe the 6-year-old killing them, and Allegra the 5-year-old and Selena the 11-year-old cleaning them out. They came back at 10 o’clock at night, we didn’t know where they went, big smiles with all that salmon.”

The ToptoTop organization’s desire, and Dario’s wish, is that after this Pole-to-Pole expedition, then a younger generation will continue this for the Schwoerers.

Dario said the hope is, “that young people take over. ThatPachamama, that’s the name of the boat that stands for Mother Earth, goes around the planet many, many times more, inspiring young people, and that hopefully we get settled once then.”

Having visited cities and towns all over the world, the Schwoerers are unsure as to where they would like to make port permanently, but they say Alaska is towards the TOP of their list. For now, the family will stay in Nome for approximately a week and then sail to Barrow to determine if they can continue up the Northwest Passage.

Last year, the Department of Defense spent $4.3 billion moving service-members and their families all over the globe.

The annual cost to taxpayers keep trending upwards, even as the overall number of moves shrinks amid a restructuring of the nation’s armed forces.

A federal report issued last year found not only that the price of the average military move is rising significantly faster than inflation, but that the military doesn’t collect enough data to make sense of where it might find savings. Or if the policy of relocating service-members every few years still makes sense.

Standing on his deck in Birkenstocks earlier this summer, Lt. Col. Alan Brown showed off his backyard in Eagle River, just a few miles beyond Anchorage.

“We’ve had moose come up right along the back end of the fence multiple times,” Brown said, pointing to a corner of the yard where his Schnauzer Lucy sniffed inquisitively.

Thickets of trees stand between the yard and the actual Eagle River down a steep slope, but Brown said during the summer he and his wife, Kristy, can hear it from their bedroom, and glimpse its edges in winter.

The deck is a peaceful reprieve from the frenzy inside: Boots crackling across butcher paper, boxes sliding over bare floors, and the screech of packing-tape bouncing off empty walls.

Every year, the US military moves about 650,000 service-members all across the globe, along with 300,000 of their dependents. In military terms, a move is labeled a “Permanent Change of Station,” although everyone calls it PCS for short.

The family has lived in this house for three years, and for Kristy Brown that constitutes a streak of stability compared to the seven moves the couple has made since getting married. She rattles off their journey from Army installations in New York, to Colorado, to Kansas, to Texas before landing at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson.

“We came up here for the stability,” Kristy Brown explained.

“Before this we’d moved annually, and that got quite challenging,” she said with an exhasperated laugh.

Postings in Alaska generally last a year longer than in the Lower 48, because the state technically counts as an overseas rotation, like bases Korea or Germany. And rotational moves are the most expensive category.

The family is moving back to New York, where Col. Brown will teach English at West Point. The plan is for Kristy Brown and their two kids to fly to the Lower 48 while Col. Brown drives their truck down the ALCAN. Then all together they’ll make their way across the country, stopping throughout national parks along the way.

But their stuff is another matter.

Alan showed me where the movers had started squeezing boxes into crates fitted within moving trucks. He described it as “power Jenga.”

“Or Tetris, depending what generation you’re from.”

Each rough wooden crate is tall enough to fit a Queen-sized mattress with room to spare.

“We had seven crates coming up here, my money’s on eight crates going back,” he explained. “We’ve accumulated some stuff.”

Those crates will make the 4,400 mile trip first by ship, and then by truck. Movers will drive them right up to the Brown’s next house, and unpack them.

This is where the Department of Defense is spending 3.7 percent of its budget every year: shuffling personnel and their families from place to place.

And every time a military family moves, everything they own goes with them — from cherished mementos and kitchenware to the furniture and toys a family just can’t seem to shed.

“That’s my scuba stuff,” Brown said, pointing to flipper protruding from a pile in a corner.

“I haven’t used those in a long time. When was the last time we went scuba diving?” Brown asked his wife.

“On our honeymoon,” she replied.

The military is moving less people annually as the size of the force draws down, but the moves are getting more expensive, outpacing inflation by 28 percent.

While there are theories as to what’s driving costs, a report last year by the Government Accountability Office looking at data on the PCS program from 2001 to 2014 found that no one in charge can definitively account for the rise.

“Some of the services report it, some don’t,” said the paper’s author, Brenda Farrell, about PCS data.

One of the biggest findings in Farrell’s GAO report is how inconsistently data on PCS costs is tracked by the different service branches and Pentagon.

And there are two reasons why this is a problem, according to Farrell. Firstly, it keeps officials from seeing which factors are actually pushing PCS costs upwards. And secondly, it means the Defense Department isn’t regularly evaluating the program to assess whether spending more than four billion taxpayer dollars a year is worth the expense.

During her review, Farrell asked officials with the Defense Department when they’d last done an assessment the PCS program, and was told that “none of them could could recall such an evaluation being done.”

“DOD’s own guidance requires that they conduct an assessment of factors that may increase or decrease costs,” Farrell said.

The GAO report makes a number of recommendations, though most of them take as a starting point that the military needs to collect more data in order to make intelligent adjustments. So far, Farrell says DOD hasn’t acted on any of the suggestions. A working group was convened in May, but it won’t begin taking steps for at least another 18 months.

Defenders of the PCS program say the frequent moves structure military careers and are one component in spreading skills across the armed forces.

As the movers deconstructed a spare bedroom, Alan Brown maintained that the PCS policy is integral to the Army’s larger mission.

“The Army could save a bunch of money if we were all stationed here for four or five years — it would cut down on the rotation,” he said. “But it doesn’t work that way.”

When personnel are promoted, he explained, there might no longer be a job for them at a given location. Other times, a soldier may need to go to a different base on the other side of the country to receive training in a particular skill set.

All of the airborne infantrymen within the 4-25th brigade combat team at JBER, for example, spent chunks of time at Fort Bragg’s jump school in North Carolina.

“The Army really needs them to move somewhere else and try something new,” Brown added.

On top of being expensive, PCS costs are spread unevenly, with disparities across the branches as well as among their ranks.

The Marines are the least expensive service-members to move, on average, at $4,679. The Air Force is the most expensive at $8,548 a move, in part because they’re the most officer-heavy branch, and officers cost more money to relocate than enlisted troops. Between 2010 and 2014, according to the GAO report, the average cost per move for an officer was $12,983, compared to $5,553 for an enlisted service-member, a difference of 134 percent.

Brown is in the Army, which falls below the Air Force but above the Marines and Navy. However, he’s an officer with a family stationed effectively overseas, and so has a high allotment for how much freight he can bring on each move: 17,500 pounds.

But the PCS program’s costs aren’t just freight. The military also pays for the various minor expenses that are normally incurred whenever you pick up your life and move it elsewhere: Reimbursements for mileage, a per diem, a relocation stipend.

“You gotta go buy mops,” Brown ticked off, “you gotta go buy cleaning supplies, you gotta go buy ketchup and mustard and all the things we can’t ship — that the Army says we’re not allowed to ship — that can’t go, that we have to leave behind.”

He isn’t sure of the bottom-line when you add all these expenses together. The Army never gives him that number.

Two days later, I checked back in, and the busy home had been transformed into an empty house.

“My wife’s Pilates equipment is completely gone, her desk is gone, dining room table is gone,” Brown said, looking around his former living-room. “It’s more like an echo chamber actually.”

There were some kitchen items and an air mattresses left — enough stuff for Brown, his wife, two kids, and Lucy to house-camp for a few days. But it turned out they sent off way more stuff than the eight crates Brown expected. In the end, it was 14, just slightly below their full allotment.

When I reached Brown by phone a few weeks later, he said the family was settling into their new home, and that the move was their most successful yet. Only one item was damaged in the relocation of nearly 9 tons worth of material from Alaska to New York: their snowblower.

One of the state’s key regulators on commercial cannabis has been unexpectedly ousted by the governor.

Bruce Schulte was active in the 2014 ballot initiative legalizing commercial marijuana in Alaska. He then served as chair of the Marijuana Control Board, a position with tremendous influence in crafting regulations for the new industry.

Recently though, he’d been voted out of the chairmanship. And last Friday, Schulte — who is a commercial pilot — landed after a flight to find an unexpected voicemail.

“I received a call from the governor’s office saying that I was being removed from the marijuana control board. No explanation was offered,” Schulte said by phone Tuesday. “I’ve tried to reach out to the head of Boards and Commissions to get some sort of explanation, and have received no response back.”

A letter emailed to Schulte and signed by Gov. Bill Walker on July 29 thanked Schulte for his service on the board, but concluded that his tenure is “no longer in the best interest of Alaska.”

Grace Jang, the governor’s director of communications, wrote in a Tuesday email that Walker “felt it was time for a change,” and that “Schulte’s approach to the staff and administrative process was not satisfactory.” Jang did not respond to a request for specific examples.

In the past, Schulte has clashed with Cynthia Franklin, who directs the Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office, which is tasked with developing regulations for the state. The two disagreed about specific regulatory policies, as well as over the timeline of implementing statewide laws, which critics said placed an unfair burden on the fledgling industry.

Schulte believes the makeup of the marijuana board reflected Alaskans divided opinions on commercialization, with both proponents and skeptics of the new industry giving regulations a measured, conservative shape in the course of the last year. He sees the effort to shake up the board’s composition as an attempt to change how regulations develop in the coming months.

“I think I was subject to some internal politics, and I think there was an internal effort within the administration to change the make up and the dynamic of the marijuana control board,” Schulte said. “Part of that was getting me off that board.”

Franklin with control office declined an interview request on Schulte’s departure, referring comments on the subject to the governor’s office. However, she responded with a list of the Marijuana Control Board’s accomplishments that included setting up the regulatory protocols for the electronic application process, the review of nearly 100 license applications, and meeting all deadlines set out in the original voter initiative.

Alaska Airlines is building a new $40 million maintenance hangar at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport.

The airline says the project, announced Friday, will let them service a growing fleet of bigger, more efficient planes.

Regional vice president Marilyn Romano said the new hangar is part of a bigger investment in the state that amounts to more than $100 million, including terminal updates and new cargo planes. It also coincides with Alaska Airline’s purchase of Virgin America, which is set to vastly expand the company’s reach.

“It really sets our company up for the future,” Romano said.

The airline has tapped local architecture firm McCool Carlson Green and general contractor Kiewit to design and build the hangar, which will measure 105,000 square feet — twice as big as the carrier’s existing maintenance structure and able to house two 737-Max 9 aircraft, the largest planes in the company’s fleet.

Romano said Alaska is still a key market for the company, even as the state struggles financially.

“We see that there’s still a future for business in the state of Alaska, and there’s definitely a future for Alaska Airlines in Alaska,” she said.

Construction on the new hangar will begin this fall, and is expected to be completed in spring of 2018.

An archaeology program has discovered a primitive knife in their fourth year of digging the Kashevaroff site at Salonie Creek in Kodiak, one of the many pieces of evidence that point to the site having been a hunting camp.

“We’re down in the very bottom levels of the site, and all the artifacts we’re finding now are like 6 to 7,000 years old,” said Patrick Saltonstall, Alutiiq Museum Curator of Archaeology.

The Alutiiq Museum’s Community Archaeology program led to the discovery of a knife this week.

“We’ve been finding really complete tools, and what’s neat is we haven’t been finding a lot of the debris,” he said. “When you make a tool, you have a lot of flakes and bits of slate and stuff, and we haven’t been finding any of that. We’re just finding tools or the broken tools, ’cause they’ve been bringing them to the site.”

The group is in its  fourth year of digging at the site. Saltonstall said they’re about to finish up on the current section and they’ve been uncovering many objects.

“It’s kind of unique ’cause it’s so big,” he said. “We find a lot of hunting lances that are shaped the same way from the same time period, but they’re about half that size. We’ve never found anything quite that big.

According to the museum website, field and lab work will continue until August 12.